Xbox+ & PS4K – Concerns

In recent weeks there have been a lot of rumours about the Xbox One and PS4 possibly having hardware upgrades in the future to keep up with the ever advancing graphics and processor improvements seen in the PC world.

At the moment these are just rumours but it does raise a number of concerns and questions.

How would this work? Is this going to be a piece of hardware you plug in to your console externally, or is it going to need to be opened up?

Cost? Graphics cards, Ram and processors are not cheap so is this not going to price many out of the market. I would expect this hardware to be at least half the cost of the original console again.

How would this work between different levels of console? In the world of pc you have to lower your settings if your system is not powerful enough. We can make the assumption there will basically be a choice of two settings, normal or upgraded. However will this not cause differing performance in games such as shooters were the upgraded system would be able to show the enemies quicker. It just seems like it would be creating a world much like the PC world where you have varying levels of systems and therefore varying levels of advantage, equalling an uneven playing field for gamers.

I originally, many years ago switched from PC to console as I was sick of the cost to upgrade graphics etc which was not cheap, quickly became out dated and still having to set the graphics to the lower settings. The console was much simpler, plug it in and go. There is already the PC supremacists, do we really need this in the console world.

Another issue is that we are just 3 years into the current generation of console and they are already talking about the next steps. If history has taught us anything it’s that it takes a few years for game developers to get to grips with a system and squeeze every last ounce of power from it, so is this not jumping the gun.

These are just a few of the many questions I’ve seen on the internet and hopefully we’ll get some satisfactory answers soon. I don’t want to live in a world where I can’t keep up with the gaming generations.

Update 24 March 15: Phil Spence in an interview on Major Nelsons podcast stated this was something they are considering for the future, not something that will be happening any time soon. This make me feel happier about the future if Xbox One.